Potomac Confidential

Washington's Hour of Talk Power

Potomac Confidential fills the midday lull with discussion by Metro columnist Marc Fisher who looks at the latest news with a rigorous slicing and dicing of the issues that define who we are and where we live.

Fisher was online Thursday, Sept. 11.

The transcript follows.

Check out Marc's blog, Raw Fisher.

Archives: Discussion Transcripts

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Marc Fisher: Welcome aboard, folks. Huge response to today's column on the Sarah Palin phenomenon and the reaction to her by women at yesterday's rally in Fairfax. We'll dive right into that and probably spend a good chunk of the hour on the political and cultural shift that Palin's candidacy represents.

But of course there's much more on the agenda, and I hope to get to some other issues too. The end of the four-decade-long Carol Schwartz era in D.C. politics is a symbol of new energy in the Republican party, especially among young people, who are in many cases recent arrivals to the District and who have generally not gotten involved in local politics in the past. The move by Congress this week to strip the District of its right to write its own gun laws is both a gun rights question and a home rule debate, and that latter piece appears to be largely ignored in the discussions on the Hill.

On to your many comments and questions, but first, let's call the Yay and Nay of the Day:

Yay to the three-judge panel in the Anne Arundel County Circuit Court that yesterday declared the ballot language on this fall's Maryland slots vote to be misleading. Unfortunately, the court ordered only that a single word on the ballot question be changed, making clear that the purpose of adding slots casinos to the state is not strictly to raise money for schools, but that that is only a "primary" purpose. Even that is misleading, since the majority of the money will go not to schools but to line the pockets of casino operators and to prop up the state's crumbling horse industry. But at least the court made it clear that the state was trying to pull a fast one on voters.

Nay to the congressional Democrats who preach their allegiance to home rule for the District, and now turn around and sponsor a bill that would strip the city of the right to decide on its own way to rework its gun laws to conform with this summer's Supreme Court ruling striking down the city's gun ban.

Your turn starts right now....

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Arlington, Va.: Palin does inject youth and energy into the campaign. That said, I fail to understand -- and am a little embarrassed by -- the lack of critical thinking about how well she may serve as the vice president of the United States, not to mention how she would perform as the president of the United States! Yes, she is energetic, has a backbone, can deliver a sound-byte, etc, but does she know enough to be able to interact credibly on the world stage? How well does she understand the issues of the day? This contest has the disturbing feel of a high school contest for class president -- she isn't being tasked with putting together the senior prom! She is being asked to help steer one of the largest economies in the world. At this point we know very little about whether she is up to the job. I don't think it is unfair to ask her to face some hard questions and evaluate how well she does. Folks seem to think this is an unreasonable request. I honestly don't get it.

Marc Fisher: I agree that there's nothing unfair about asking hard questions, but obviously the Republican campaign strategists have decided to run against the media and the whole concept of experience and the broad base of knowledge that holding national office implies. It is fruitless for the Democrats to insist solely that a campaign be about the so-called issues, both because campaigns are never strictly about issues, and because this is, as I argue in today's column, a new twist on American politics, a ratcheting up of the idea that personal and group affinities are more important than expertise or experience. Sure, the Democrats and responsible Republicans should have it out on the issues and policies of the day, but the Democrats also need to engage in the place where they are uncomfortable--on the matter of how much Americans feel not only empathy, but a sense of shared lives and experiences, which is the key to Palin's appeal.

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Were any of the moms Independents or Dems before the Palin choice?: Marc, how many of the women you interviewed at the rally were undecided/independents/Democrats that were swayed to McCain after the Palin choice, versus how many were already McCain supporters? Personally, I admire Palin, but won't vote for her due to her beliefs. Were these moms already Republican voters, or did her "working mom" identity trump any particular issue?

Marc Fisher: Obviously a rally like yesterday's draws mostly hard-core supporters. But I was surprised by how many people I spoke to -- especially women -- who had been anywhere from lukewarm to actively antagonistic to McCain before the Palin pick. And there were many independents and Democrats (funny how so many people continue to call themselves Democrats and when I ask them when they last voted for a Dem for president, they have to reach back to Carter or McGovern) as well, including quite a few people who had been surprised to find themselves leaning to or supporting Hillary Clinton and now are fascinated by Palin.

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Midlothian, Va.: I'm disturbed by your conclusion that Palin is the choice of working moms, based on interviews with people who, remarkably, took time out of their working day to go see her. Most working moms were actually at work during Palin and McCain's rally yesterday. That people at a Palin rally said they support Palin isn't a surprise. I would have preferred an survey of the women I see every night at the grocery store about 6:00 p.m., picking up last minute groceries on the way home from work. Your survey is the equivalent of asking people at a Miley Cyrus concert if they're fans of Hannah Montana. I'm just a few years older than Palin, with two teenagers. I've worked continually since I was 17 and I can't think of a woman who less represents me than Sarah Palin. She's Bush in heels.

Marc Fisher: Good point -- of course the crowd at a rally for any candidate is wildly skewed, but that makes it a great place to try to delve into why people are showing the level of support and commitment that they are. Separately, I spent a chunk of time in some western Fairfax neighborhoods talking to random voters, quite a few of whom were in the process of making the Hillary to Palin switch, and that informed my thinking about the whole larger Palin phenomenon.

I can't agree that she's Bush in heels: Bush was an early version of what Palin represents. But remember that while he sort of admitted to having had drinking problems earlier in life, he wouldn't touch questions about drugs, draft-dodging or any other imperfections. Whereas Palin seems to want to make her family's troubles a cornerstone of her identity and candidacy -- that represents an emotional availability that lends itself to our national voyeurism, which is fed constantly by the pop culture of the web and the rest of the entertainment-information industry.

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Arlington, Va.: Apropos of your piece today, I was reminded of Peggy Noonan's now famous faux pas in which she complained that the selection involved the choice of "narrative" over substance. I can see how some women might see their experiences reflected in the Palin story, but do we really want a VP who, going into her second week as the nominee, has yet to face a hard question personally?

Marc Fisher: Depends on who the "we" is in your question. Not to be Clintonian in my response, but we really are a divided culture in some ways, and while most people share a dislike of political truth-shading and squishy principles, there are some who take refuge in the world of issues and policies and others who judge politicians according to how closely they seem to be attached to normal lives. At the top of national politics, it's very rare to find someone who lives "just like us," to use the phrase I heard so many people utter at the McCain-Palin rally. So Palin seems a startlingly different character, and as I argue in today's column, she's especially attractive because she fits in with so much of how our society has been changing -- we're in a phase where all authority and expertise and experience is suspect, where anyone can do anything on the web, where one anonymous voice can be taken as seriously as the voice of someone who has studied something for decades. It's a terrifically fascinating moment in the evolution of the culture, and Palin comes along to represent that hyperdemocracy concept just beautifully.

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washingtonpost.com: Marc's column today: For Working Moms, 'Flawed' Palin Is the Perfect Choice (The Washington Post, Sept. 11, 2008)

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Shaftsburg, Mich.: Marc Fisher, do you ever consider that many of us are insulted by your oft demonstrated, and flawed, urban-centric contempt for heartland folkways, mores, and family values?

Marc Fisher: I guess you are the "many." I don't buy the concept that urban values and heartland values are in opposition, nor do I see much difference, except in purely stylistic ways, in how urban and rural residents think about or care for family. There are certainly strong class differences in this society, and we tend to gloss over them, but you're right that they're coming out in this election in a very visible way. I hear that in the contempt with which some liberals talk about Palin, and in the defensiveness that some conservatives show about her inexperience and lack of knowledge. That's why this is the most fascinating election since 1968.

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Jessup, Md.: If I were your editor, you would be gone and out the door, take your stuff with you. The kind of reporting in your article about Palin makes my skin crawl. We live in an age where Republicans script out anything the candidate says and then sell a personal image in a controlled environment. Either you are a Republican or you are extremely naive about how Palin has "capitivated" her believers. The role of the press shouldn't be to do superficial analysis that just puts a postivistic spin on what happens.

Marc Fisher: Wow -- just when I'm hearing from Republicans that I've dissed their candidate and have twisted Sarah Palin's genuine appeal into a statement of American anti-intellectualism, now you come along to argue that I'm somehow following a Republican script. We do indeed sometimes dwell in different realities in this land.

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NO to Palin: The only thing she shares with me, or Hillary Clinton, is a chromosome. No woman, working or not, that I know likes her. She is a joke. Furthermore, most of us have working husbands too. And many men and women are struggling to make ends meet. Represents real women? NO. Represents a common type of woman? NO. She doesn't have the education or the judgment or the knowledge or even the common sense to be president. It does not matter if she would be fun to work with on a PTA project. She is NOT qualified to be one heartbeat away from the presidency. She is not qualified to tell me -- or anyone -- that I must not have an abortion. She is not qualified to push an obviously failed policy of abstinence! She is not qualified to meet with foreign leaders. She does not support special needs children or families and would not, has not, spent one dime to help them. This was cynical, cold, tokenism by McCain. This is disrespecting our country at a supreme level. Honestly, we do not need trivial articles like this. We need real reporting about how these woman, and others, would respond to facts about her true actions with the Bridge to Nowhere and her belief in the Iraq war and the end times, and how can she approach dealing with real complex multi-cultural urban problems? Be a real reporter, for the country's sake, don't be a panderer. I'm so disappointed in you.

Marc Fisher: I hear your apoplectic rage about the Palin phenomenon from a lot of liberal women (and men). I keep hearing from Hillary supporters who think it's absolutely outrageous that any feminist would flip over to or be remotely attracted by Palin. But if you had been with me at the rally, you would have taken a step back as you heard women who created their own businesses and who very much believe that women get a raw deal in this society arguing that Palin's story is their story, and that Palin's trumpeting of her ability to balance family and work is every bit as important a feminist statement as Hillary Clinton's talk about cracking up the glass ceiling.

But how can such women be for someone who is anti-abortion and a social conservative and so on? In most of my conversations with the Clinton-to-Palin switchers, their conclusion -- quite reasonably given the last three decades of American history -- is that abortion is largely a dead issue, that with an enormous percentage of Americans in support of at least some form of abortion rights, and with 20 years of Reagan/Bush/Bush presidencies essentially just paying lip service to their fundamentalist Christian base on the issue of abortion, the right seems fixed. Maybe they're wrong, but that's their reading of the situation. And they are, as I've said here several times, driven far more by personality and character than by issues.

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Logan North, D.C.: In his op-ed column today, David Broder pontificates that "What we know is that the American people take the choice of a new president very seriously." In your column today, you posit that a not insignificant number of Americans may be treating the presidential race as an enhanced reality show competition. Do you agree with Broder that the people you encountered yesterday are taking the race "very seriously?" While I'd like to believe Broder, much of what I see in media coverage (particularly on cable TV and small-town newspapers in "battleground" states) tends to make me support your reality show hypothesis, cynical as it may be.

Marc Fisher: Not just because I revere David Broder, but because I really think it's true, my answer is that both of us are right. I ran into very few reflexive McCain-Palin supporters at yesterday's rally -- of course, there are dyed in the wool Republicans who were there because that's their party and they believe in its principles or have spent their lives working for its candidates. But far more frequently, my conversations were with people who were taking this choice very seriously, and who really dislike Bush and the war, and who had surprised themselves by being very much attracted to either Hillary Clinton or Obama back last spring, but who have been moving over to the R side, either because they fear that only the Republicans will protect us from terrorism -- an issue on which the Democrats still don't make an emotionally convincing case -- or because they see something that connects in Sarah Palin.

I have rarely been at a political rally where the crowd was so lukewarm about the man at the top of the ticket. The number of people who, after hearing Palin, walked out on McCain was just stunning.

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Gaithersburg, Md.: Dear Marc, as a Washington area "working mom," I read your piece in the Metro section with interest. Alas, I must beg to differ that Palin (or McCain) represent a "perfect choice." While it is admirable that Sarah Palin has achieved so much while raising a family, I cannot in good conscience embrace the candidacy. The campaign has to this point offered its audiences a diet of half-truths and untruths: as the WP has shown, the Bridge to Nowhere story is a story. Further, the failure of the campaign to show integrity by not crying wolf on sexism at every (ridiculous) turn is depressing to anyone who has seen real sexism. I choose integrity and honesty as values greater than power -- but I don't see that in this campaign. A women interviewed in your piece said that Palin "is a statement that anyone can make it if he or she really tries" -- Maybe that should have read, "...if he or she really lies." Thanks for letting this frustrated "working mom" have her say.

Marc Fisher: Thanks for the venting -- the trick for the Democrats will be to find a way to translate frustration such as yours into a message that hits home with the same kind of emotional wallop as Palin conveys, or as Obama communicated last spring. Instead, we see a strangely emotionally constricted Obama all of a sudden, as if he doesn't know how to respond.

Yesterday, I spoke to an Obama strategist who argued that the Palin phenomenon is a passing phase, "a honeymoon that won't last more than a couple of weeks," he said. I think he couldn't be more wrong and if his view represents that of the Obama camp broadly, then they are toast.

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Alexandria, Va.: I think it is strange that you feign surprise that the American public exhibiting a strange new attraction to a populist candidate, and suggest that throughout our history Americans have always preferred politicians from elite backgrounds. Geez. You don't really think that. Have you read of Reagan's upbringing? Wasn't Carter a peanut farmer? Wasn't Clinton raised by a single mom in small town Arkansas? Wasn't Nixon from humble roots? Truman? Lincoln? Umm, didn't we start this at least as far back as Andrew Jackson?

Marc Fisher: Populism is a grand and essential tradition in American politics, and I'm pretty much a sucker for it myself. But what's different about the Palin phenomenon is that it takes a big step beyond the tradition of populism, at least as it has evolved in the past century. Our greatest populists come right out of the elite, whether it's Pat Buchanan on the right (upper Northwest D.C. kid who goes to fancy schools and is right at home with the Eastern liberal media elite) or Norman Thomas on the left (a Princeton man through and through). Reagan was a Hollywood idol. Carter a millionaire and Naval Academy wonk -- a nuclear scientist! We like our populists well-bred in this country, and there's nothing wrong with that. Palin's is a very different biography -- yes, perhaps more like an Andrew Jackson in some ways, but he was an accomplished general long before he opened the White House to the riff-raff.

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Fairfax County, Va.: Dear Marc, I was fascinated by your reporting about voter responses to Sarah Palin. Locally, I am finding many Democrats (especially women) passionately opposed to her. She is a real lightning rod both for and against.

I would take the literal words of her supporters with a grain of salt, though. I think they just connect with her so strongly that they will say what seem like illogical things (defiantly praising her lack of knowledge, for example) because they don't want to be drawn into a debate. If a news report came out tomorrow that she had aced every class she ever took and also secretly served as our envoy to Russia, they'd be more than happy to tout those accomplishments.

It seems to me more like infatuation and a resulting "don't confuse me with the facts" attitude, than actual hostility to talent, achievement, or knowledge. Not that infatuation is so great either.

Marc Fisher: Excellent point, and I'm sure that in many cases you're right. But there is a point of pride that many people now take in their separation from authoritative information, in their skepticism or outright rejection of anything that comes from academia, the media or any other previously respected source. And the Republicans are tapping into this quite brilliantly.

The spectacle yesterday of seeing millionaire Fred Thompson, who lives in Fairfax, talking up millionaire John McCain, who lives in northern Virginia, to a crowd of people who live in houses and communities vastly more affluent than most American neighborhoods, and then egging this crowd on to bash bureaucrats (which many of them are) and to laugh uproariously at "the brie and chablis crowd" (which many of them are), and to then see that crowd laugh and shout along with Thompson, was just amazing.

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Arlington, Va.: While you were wandering the rally and Fairfax, did you get any vibes about how people there, mostly true believers, are reacting to Jim Gilmore and the replacement of Tom Davis?

Marc Fisher: Tom Davis was the emcee at yesterday's rally, and he dutifully introduced Jim Gilmore -- the former Virginia governor now running for the U.S. Senate, a position that Davis had very much wanted for himself -- and left it at that. Other Republican officeholders got more effusive intros and congressman Frank Wolf got to speak to the crowd, but Gilmore got squat.

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Alexandria, Va.: Your column today highlighted the "just like us" sentiment that seems to be attracting people to Palin. You seem to dismiss this, arguing that out best leaders aren't like us, but are more educated, experienced, etc. I wonder if you thought the same way when a realatively unknown southern governor told us: "I feel your pain." It's the same story now, it's just coming from a different perspective.

Marc Fisher: It's all a continuum -- from Clinton's supreme ability to convey empathy, to George Bush's presentation as a regular guy compared to stiff Al Gore, and now to Palin, who, as several women I talked to put it, "doesn't just understand our lives, but actually lives our lives." And I think you have to look at this in the context of the rest of the culture -- of reality TV, and the culture of the web, and the decline of fact-based institutions such as newspapers, TV news, the teaching profession, the whole concept of expertise...

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Cubefarm, DC: Marc,

My husband and I are from the heartland, now living in the District. I have to say that we both enjoyed your article today -- it did speak more to how (in our opinion) the women in flyover country would perceive Palin. It's one thing to talk to the people contributing to this chat (ahem); they will most likely be at odds with her and her beliefs. However, it's another to talk to miliary wives (as you have previously) and the women at the rallies. I think it was a good way for people within the Beltway to get a glimpse at the true national debate, which has little in common with the one presented to us on the nightly news.

And for the record, I say this as a die-hard Democrat.

Marc Fisher: Thanks -- one of the joys of my job is that I get to travel back and forth between those various worlds, and somehow I'm still always amazed by our ability to wall ourselves off into communities of like-thinking people, to the extent that we truly find it hard to believe that people with opposing world views exist or might even be rational and thoughtful and good-hearted folks.

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Washington, D.C.: As someone who spent about 20 years in Fairfax County and about five years in Arlington and D.C., I can say that Fairfax is nowhere as Democratic or liberal as Arlington or D.C. I feel like the Post keeps painting it as on the verge of becoming another Arlington which is crazy. Instead I see a tradition of moderation in who Fairfax elects. Kaine and Webb and Connolly are all pretty moderate Democrats. I don't think anyone saw Tom Davis or Frank Wolf as ideologues. I don't think Fairfax has ever shown itself in the past 25 years to be particularly partisan one way or the other. To the extent Republicans have done poorly it is because they ran someone on the far right. That's why I think McCain has a pretty good shot there.

Marc Fisher: Excellent post -- and yes, Fairfax is a much more mixed bag than easily stereotyped places such as Arlington, Alexandria or the District. Just at yesterday's rally, you had hard-core Christian conservatives who are the backbone of Sen. Ken Cuccinelli's support in western Fairfax, and liberal Republicans, including many federal workers, who think it's just a shame that Rep. Tom Davis is essentially being drummed out of his own party, and lots of much more apolitical people in between, people who are perfectly willing to vote for a Democrat who they believe shares their values, a Jim Webb or a Mark Warner. But you're right -- that does not remotely make those voters automatic Barack Obama voters. They need to be persuaded, and interestingly enough, they're willing to be persuaded.

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Annapolis, Md.: I don't have a question, just a comment because I could go on and on about McCain's blatantly obvious pandering but I will only point out his campaigns one of many hypocritical points to ignore experience as an issue for being POTUS or VP. As a proud, first-generation University of MD grad. and working mother, I believe one of the requirements of being elected POTUS (anyone can run) should be demonstrating intellectual ability whether it's at Harvard, the Naval Academy, or Univ. of Idaho. Graduating near the bottom of your class and not traveling out of the country (especially when you govern so close to a foreign country) are indications of the dullards the Republican party keeps pushing on to this country.

Marc Fisher: Well, I'm not about to argue for the benefits of hiring lousy students to do tough jobs, but the historical record is muddier than most of us would like it to be on this point. Truly awful or careless or unstudious students have been among our best and most popular presidents, and among our worst and least popular presidents.

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Olney, Md.: Have you noticed that almost all your questioners are Democratic supporters who use catastrophic language about someone with whom they disagree? Thank you for being right down the middle and factual.

Now here is my partisan opinion: When Sen. Clinton was running for office, her supporters and the press in general often talked about the importance of her being the first female to run for president and that it was earth-shattering and the main reason to vote for her. When it is now about Sarah Palin, much of the press and "women's" groups suddenly say it's liberal issues that should be the reason to not support her. They are hypocrites, if you ask me. At least you don't say it either way.

Marc Fisher: No, I don't see that -- I haven't counted, but I'm seeing a decent mix of views here on today's chat. It's certainly true that the readership on this site is probably more liberal than average, but it would be a big mistake to assume that ours is a predominantly liberal, Democratic readership, because it just is not, and that's borne out both by reader surveys and by the experience here on the chat and on our comment boards.

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McLean, Va.: Given the celebrity flavor of national politics, why not do away with debates ad have the candidates compete on a special election season of American Idol this fall?

If you insist on having candidate debates, I think the only choice for debate moderator should be Jerry Springer.

Marc Fisher: Politics and pop culture have been moving inexorably toward one another for half a century and this cycle, they've taken an extra big step closer.

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WV: You're at a rally. FOR the Republican ticket. Did you really expect to run into women who did not support Palin? As a white woman, working mom, one of the supposedly "captivated", I am NOT. I am appalled at McCain's choice. She does not represent any of my interests, or my life. This is not apopleptic liberal rage. I used to admire McCain. I started worrying about him after he seemed to cave to Bush (Rove's) ways, but I still had respect for him. Until now. His choice says he cares little about my concerns, and his judgement is surely questionable.

Marc Fisher: No, as I said above, obviously a rally presents a highly skewed slice of the population. But every rally presents a grand opportunity to explore why people feel as strongly as they do, and to discover what it is that drives people to hold the positions they do and to associate with the people they've chosen to be with.

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Cap Hill, DC: Marc,

I don't want the president to be an average American. I want him/her to be really smart, well-educated, knowledgable of the world and to have demonstrated good judgement. Apparently those are fatal flaws these days.

Marc Fisher: The good news is that both parties this year chose their best candidate; very few people seem to agree with me on this, but I think this is the best choice Americans have been given in several decades. Vice presidential picks and cynical campaign strategies aside (yes, I know, that's a lot to put aside), the two presidential candidates are everything you seek--smart, knowledgeable, interesting blends of maverick and traditional politician.

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Herndon, Va.: I am a Democrat for Palin (and woman!) and note that she has more executive experience than the two Washington lawyers atop the Dem ticket and McCain combined.

It's insulting to say that being on City Council, Mayor, and Governor of a State with all foreign borders is not "experience." In what universe? The nation is made up towns, cities and states!

But then again, you won't print my comment... you are only printing the anti-Palin ones for the most part.

Nice journalistic objectivity.

Marc Fisher: Yes, for the 693rd time this year, I fell for the "you won't use my comment" ruse.

I'm a big fan of local government and I believe that experience at the local and state level is far better preparation for the presidency than experience in Congress is. That's why governors have generally made for better presidents than senators. That said, Palin is not exactly experienced in the sense that, say, Ronald Reagan or Bill Clinton were.

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Midlothian, Va.: Marc, you misunderstand my comment about Palin being Bush in heels. I'm talking about her political stances, not her personal life. I believe she has completely exploited her children, even while telling the rest of the world to back off them. She guards her family's privacy, until she needs it for political game. But her politics -- that's Bush all the way and it needs to be exploited to demonstrate just how little she is an agent of change.

Marc Fisher: I don't think you can compare Palin's political stands to Bush's in any useful way because most of her positions were either just formed in the last few days or have to be gleaned from the very thin record of her past. I see some very worrisome positions that she's taken in her municipal experience and in her personal life -- do we really want a vice president who inquired into how to ban books from the local schools, or a vice president who believes that creationism ought to be taught in public schools? But Bush had a much more detailed record as governor in Texas at this stage than Palin has in Alaska.

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Arlington, Va.: Serious question here, does democracy work on the national scale? It seems like each election is more and more superficial and based on pre-packaged "reality." Yesterday the major debate seemed to be about the use of the word lipstick (ok for one side, not the other).

I guess I missed when all the problems the country is facing were solved. Did the automatons at the rally have any ideas about those things or were they just too enraptured to see someone "just like them?"

Sigh.

Marc Fisher: Sadly, both parties seem to get away with steering public attention to silly gaffes and gotchas. The entertainers of cable TV news channels eat that stuff up, and judging by the ratings, so do the audiences. But I wouldn't want a campaign to be a policy seminar either. There is in the rough and tumble of a campaign a whole series of demeaning and dumb rituals that do test people and do show us something of their character and their ability to manage crisis and to run an organization. It ain't even close to perfect, but it has its own natural wisdom to it.

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Fairfax County, Va. : Just for curiosity's sake, how ethnically/racially diverse was the crowd you saw yesterday?

Marc Fisher: I saw one black person and two Asians in the crowd. It was the whitest crowd I've been in since the mass of Americans who gathered on the Mall for the Ronald Reagan funeral.

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Boyds, Md.: You said 8,000 attended the McCain-Palin rally. The police estimated 23,000. What counting technique did you use? Did you have help? Why the big difference?

Marc Fisher: I counted the people who were gathered in the natural bowl of the park. The area was fenced in by the Secret Service, so it was relatively easy to count. Any crowd is a moving target, so it's fair to consider a count to be off by, say, 10 percent. I don't know what method the police used for their estimate, but it seems way off to me. I did an actual person by person count, and it took well more than an hour to accomplish. It's probably fair to conclude that the actual number was a bit higher than my count, but to get to the police estimate, people would have had to be stacked.

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Reston, Va.: I attended the McCain-Palin rally yesterday and I'm amazed at your comments regarding the size of the crowd and people leaving after Palin's speech and before McCain's. You say that YOU counted the crowd at 8,000; this is just not credible. How in the world did you do this and what is your experience in estimating crowd size? The police estimated the crowd at 23,000 and they are much more experienced at that task than you are. As far as people leaving before McCain's speech, the only people I saw leaving, and I was standing next to the fenced entrance/exit path, were people with volunteer badges who probably needed to assist in people exiting the Park or hand out signs for people to take home, and those with small children who had been standing for 2-3 hours in the sun. The crowd was at least 50% female many of them teenagers and college-aged and all were orderly, polite and in a happy mood. What a GREAT experience!

Marc Fisher: I've been counting crowds at rallies for about 28 years, and of course that doesn't mean I'm any good at it. But I've covered many rallies at which I was able to compare my counts to those by others, and I'm convinced that I get pretty close, especially when the venue is a controlled space. A moving march, for example, is a much tougher project.

As for the stream of people leaving, that's simply undeniable. The Secret Service guys were joking about it as the crowd poured out during McCain's speech. The cops hadn't even had a chance to take down the barriers they used as people were security-screened on the way in.

But I agree wholeheartedly with you that it was a great and fascinating experience.

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Washington, DC: Marc, Posting early because I just read your article this morning and it struck such a chord with me. I had been trying to glean the attraction of Governor Palin beyond the staunch conservative base who, of course, loves her right wing social and political philosophies. Why, though, would seemingly intelligent independents and even some Democrats have any inclination to support a woman who is likely to argue for extremely conservative Supreme Court judges, opening up public school education to the teaching (or discussion) of creationism, and who is, by any reasonable measure, unqualified for the position of president. Then, your article hit upon a familiar refrain that echoes back to the election (and reelection) of the current president -- that more Americans wanted to have a beer with Bush rather than Gore or Kerry. And because of this sense of sympatico, they voted for the person they most wanted to hang out with, rather than the person most qualified. This scenario was recently effectively ridiculed in the Doonesbury comic strip. Now, Governor Palin has tapped into that same mentality, especially with women and your article highlighted it beautifully.

Marc Fisher: Thanks, but I do think it's more than just wanting to have a beer with the candidate. It really reflects a longing to vote for someone who might understand how much more difficult it has become to make a living, raise a family, and have a sane life and a real community in this country. The longing for someone who might get--and might even have experienced -- those strains is palpable, and for all her imperfections -- indeed, because of those imperfections, Palin appears to many as that sort of person.

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London, UK: Let's not avoid the ugly fact that there is a very good chance the John Mcain will die during his first term. I am an actuary and have the statistics to back me up regarding 72 year old men with a history of cancer. Do you believe that the women cheering for Palin at the rally believe that she can effectively occupy the Oval Office?

In reading her background; I found a frightening amount of inexperience, not only to be the VP, but I also wonder if she was qualified to be the mayor of Wasilla, or dog catcher for that matter.

You've had eight years with an incurious amateur; eight more will completely destroy your country.

Marc Fisher: Nah, the country's pretty tough, it will survive. But contrary to your actuarial tables, we have the sight of McCain's feisty mom at 96. On the other hand, we have the experience of watching Reagan start to lose it in his second term. But memories are short.

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Cheverly Md: Marc,

When do you think the media will get back to reporting about the PRESIDENTIAL election between Obama and McCain? Also with all the attention paid to Palin, does the media feel that it owes equal coverage to Joe Biden?

Marc Fisher: Great question -- not if the Republicans can keep the focus on Palin. Obama's challenge is to reassert himself, but he's been playing it safe of late. That won't win him the election.

A few other topics before we go:

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Maryland: I read this a.m. that the state funding for the improvements in the roads surrounding the new Medical Center in Bethesda has been cut by at least a third by the state. Do you think this will have any effect on the plans? The people who live there must be beside themselves at the news.

Marc Fisher: Lots of areas all around the state will be hit hard by this latest round of budget cuts, and yes, I can certainly imagine that the feds will go ahead with the move of jobs to the Naval Hospital area even if the transportation fixes lag behind.

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Washington, DC: Any chance Carol Schwartz will pull a Lieberman and run as an independent?

I didn't agree with her on every issue, but her constituant services were amazing. She always had her staff address any governmental issues I came to her with. I'm a DCPS teacher, and without her there were a few years where I wouldn't have had textbooks.

Marc Fisher: No, Schwartz is out. The deadline for filing as an independent has passed, so hers would have to be a write-in candidacy, and she told me last night that there will be no such thing. She is finished with politics.

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Non Palin question!: What happened to Carol Schwartz? I'm a Democrat but had a lot of respect for her...

Marc Fisher: She ran into the reality that she hasn't been much of a Republican for a long time and that her support was mainly from D.C. Democrats, so when she finally got an intra-party challenge, she was vulnerable, and the eagerness of the business lobby to get rid of her did the trick.

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Navy Yard, SE D.C.: Marc, I don't support the congressional effort to rewrite the District's gun laws, and the chief's position that they could not stop someone carrying an assault rifle along Pennsylvania Ave during the inaugeration was laughable -- but since the District chose to thumb their nose at the recent Supreme Court opinion and unreasonable and illegally restrict sales, prohibit semi-automatic hand guns, etc., I can't say that Fenty didn't ask for this kind of intervention.

Marc Fisher: Absolutely right -- the District didn't just ask for this, they virtually begged for it. Fenty and Peter Nickles chose not to accept the Supreme Court ruling, but to publicly announce that they would do everything they could think of to undermine it. They didn't use those words, of course, but their actions speak for themselves. Now the city will likely lose its right to craft its own gun laws, and the result will be something far less restrictive than the city could have accomplished on its own with a more moderate approach.

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Bowie: Your Nay of the Week takes Congressional Dems to task for interfering with the D.C. Gov't in the response to the gun decision. I see where Obama was quoted as saying he agrees with the Supreme Court decision and favors an individual's right to bear arms. Did I hear wrong?

Marc Fisher: You heard just right. Finding Democrats willing to stand up to the gun lobby and say what they privately believe is about as hard as finding Republicans who will stand up to the anti-abortion lobby and say what they privately believe.

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Arlington, Va.: Marc, a few months back you had a YAY that the voters in Montgomery County would be able to vote on the transgender protection law. I'm an LGBT activist and was very glad the courts ruled against allowing voters to decide on a minority protection statute. What are your thoughts now? Should the voters get to vote on a civil rights issue?

Marc Fisher: It's tragic that the court won't allow MoCo voters to analyze the proposal for themselves and register their own views about whether transgender people should be given special status under county law. Same goes for slots--I'm fine with putting the question to the voters, but only if the ballot question honestly lays out what the state is really planning to do.

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Section 128 Row E: Can we sue Luis Ayala to get back his salary? Based on the way he pitched against the Nats, it's obvious that he was purposely tanking while pitching for them.

Marc Fisher: Or he's a head case and he somehow lost the ability to pitch here because of the personal problems that the team kept whispering about this season. Or he's juiced by being on a contending team. Or he just couldn't get his heart into the Nats games because he was so angry about not becoming the closer. There is talent there -- we saw that in earlier seasons. Too bad it didn't show here this year.

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Washington D.C.: Marc: OK, so you're a DC teacher in your 30s,40s or older. You've seen Chancellor Rhee's management style, which is to clean house and start over as much as possible. That's not just what she says she wants to do, it's what she has done every time she is given the chance. Now, she's telling you that you'd get way more money under her proposed deal ... but you'd have to give up tenure, which means you might get fired.

Why on earth would you vote in favor of that deal? Is there any doubt that if it goes through, in a year we'll read about a great many older DC teachers losing their jobs because the administration will want to make a change and will see them as part of the problem? Why would it make any sense to accept the vague promise of future raises over the more likely outcome of having to hit the job market in a year during tough economic times? The odds of a charter school taking away your job in 5 years is far less than the odds of Chancellor Rhee taking away your job next June.

Unless you're seriously arguing that most of the teachers would return anyway, absent of tenure. In which case I would ask what in Chancellor Rhee's history of dealing with people makes that a credible argument.

Marc Fisher: Right -- if you're an old teacher near the end of career and you're coasting or just don't think you could hit the measures they'd use to judge you, then you'd be right to vote down the merit pay plan. But if you're younger and buy Rhee's ideas or see that some of your colleagues are much more effective than others, then all that extra money starts to sound really enticing.

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Washington, D.C.: Palin was recently mayor of a town of around 6,000. That's the equivalent of maybe 2 ANC districts here. Then she was governor of a state with as many people as D.C. since 2007. So let's see, if Palin is qualified, should Adrian Fenty be considering a presidential bid? How about Frank Winstead for veep?

Marc Fisher: Wouldn't it be cool to have a veep who wanders around taping bad scenes and putting them on YouTube like our man Winstead?

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HoCo, MD: Hi Marc,

Really enjoyed reading your column this morning. I'm a longtime Democrat and Obama supporter, and once again I fell into the trap of overconfidence toward the end of this election campaign. In 2004, I expected the electorate to toss Bush owing to the mounting evidence that his administration was mishandling the war in Iraq and the questionable tactics being used to gather intelligence both at home and abroad. But to be fair, Kerry wasn't particularly inspiring and his campaign could have been run more effectively.

This time around, Obama certainly has shown his abilities to inspire voters and to run a good campaign. Now, due to the entrance of Palin as McCain's running mate, it's as if blinders have been placed over a segment of the electorate.

How can the GOP get away with harping on experience for so long and end up with a VP candidate that is clearly not qualified for the Presidency? McCain is neither young nor healthy, so this is an absolutely crucial consideration. There's a big difference between experience as a wedding flower designer, like the person quoted in your article, and experience as a politician who acts on the world stage. How can experience be a liability in this situation? Why are flaws admirable? Are that many people's hypocrisy detectors broken?

Until now, Palin's post-convention rhetoric has consisted of repeating excerpts (nearly verbatim) from the speech she delivered at the convention. It will be interesting to see what happens once/if she is diverted from the prepared material. Kudos to any journalist who manages to force Palin off script in the context of meaningful political discourse.

Marc Fisher: If Palin is exposed to questioning, it will likely be too much of the gotcha school and will backfire, even if it does expose her to be less than well informed. But I wouldn't bet on that. If there's one thing we know about her, it's that she can handle herself nicely in front of a camera or a crowd. She was a TV sportscaster, you know.

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Washington, D.C.: The idea that "anyone can be president" is absurd. The original concept of our country was that the presidency is not a monarchy, so there was no requirement that the president be a member of the landed aristocracy. In modern times, this has been expanded, and now the mere fact that someone is black, or a woman, or something other than a white man is not an automatic bar to becoming the president. However, I really believe that the President of the United States should be someone who is extremely bright, thoughtful, engaged, gifted at management, articulate - basically, the best of the best. I want my president to be smarter than I am. Why has it become a bad thing for someone with all of those gifts to be running for president? Why has the main criteria become whether the person in question has led a life similar to mine? Once someone becomes president, his or her life will not be like mine at all, and I'd like to think that we should take that into consideration when making our decisions in the voting booth. Bottom line - I guess I'm sick of the idea that having college and law or business degrees from top schools automatically means that a person is an out of touch elitist. When did having brains and working hard become bad things in this country?

Marc Fisher: Just a couple more quick ones before we wrap....

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Washington, DC: Why is being young and relatively inexperienced a good thing for Obama and a bad thing for Palin? Or, put more cyncially, a good thing for a man and a bad thing for a woman?

Marc Fisher: Palin's amount of experience doesn't bother me nearly as much as her distance from so many of the problems a president has to work on.

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Annandale, Va.: Your editorial in the Metro Section of the Post today reveals a real ignorance of the American presidency. Most of our presidents had very humble origins. You said, "They tend to have come from wealth, power, fame, the pinnacle of our education system or all of the above." This is not true. Even President Reagan came from poverty and went to an obscure college. Most presidents had exactly the kind of origins as Sarah Palin. We have not been led by elites. You should do some research on where the American presidents went to college. Only four were Harvard educated. Some never went to college. The first president to be born in a hospital was Jimmy Carter. I can't believe the Post would allow such poor scholarship from one of their writers. Do your research next time.

Marc Fisher: Do the math -- our presidents have tended to come from wealth, power and prestigeful institutions. Not just Harvard, of course, but for most of our history, we have looked up to presidents as in many ways our betters, even as we cherish their connections to small towns and humble backgrounds.

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Palin: I have lived the last eight years with a President that I don't think is smarter than me. Bottom line, I think all the people who are in line for the office should be smarter than me, no matter the party. I may not agree with you but I want to be able to have an articulate discussion about the issues. So far, I have not seen anything about her that indicates she is and as a result there is no way that ticket gets my vote.

Marc Fisher: Couple more...

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Dupont Circle: Every Hillary supporter I know, whether mom or not, white, black, Asian, Hispanic, etc., is now firmly in the McCain-Palin camp (no matter how much dirt they "dig up" on her).

Many journalists and D.C. elites who think they are so damn smart, are, to use the cliche, out of touch with ordinary women, and women who do not march in lockstep with the Dems. These people also think that most voters and women think exactly like they do (wrong!).

They say liberal Dems won't back a "gun-toting, evangelical neophyte" like Palin. They say we "are too smart" to back Palin. They say we won't switch allegiances to Palin because of abortion, etc. But we are not all "issue voters" and some of us refuse to be boxed into neat little categories. Some of us are independent thinkers and have not drunk the Obama koolaid. Some of us also care about experience, character and leadership. McCain-Palin beats Obama on all these points.

Marc, the female factor will be hard to measure, because some women will be afraid to say it out loud (that they are pro-McCain) to the media, and others won't admit it to their liberal, Obama-loving friends. But once they step into that voting booth, all bets will be off and they, much to the liberal blowhards' chagrin, might just punch McCain-Palin. As a liberal Democrat, I'd just like to say that the Dems brought this on themselves. They made a mockery of the primaries (I voted HRC), and refused to put Hillary on the ticket. If Obama is so great, I wonder why it is that he, despite the disastrous eight years of Dubya, has not been able to have a commanding lead in the polls? With the state of the economy and the deplorable war in Iraq, Obama should be pummeling the GOP. Could it be that he is in fact THE WRONG CHOICE?

Marc Fisher: And this.....

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Petworth: This whole Palin flap is making me nuts in a very specific way.

I'm a woman without children. There are lots of us. There are also lots of women who no longer have children at home. But the Republicans seem to assume that all women are working mommies of small children. Well, that's not me, that will never be me, that has never been me. I don't object to a candidate who is the working mother of small children, I just object to the thought that woman=mother that the republicans are pushing on us yet again. (And no, I won't vote McCain, because I disagree with almost everything he stands for.)

Marc Fisher: And this...

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Annandale, Va.: What is wrong with Former Judge Fancy Pants? Is he really appealing the ruling against him and his $54 million dollar lawsuit over a lost pair of pants?

Marc Fisher: Yes, the appeal will be heard Oct. 22.

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Marc Fisher: That has to kick things in the head for today. We can come back to this next week if you wish. More in the blog every day, and in the column on Sunday. Thanks for coming along and apologies to the many, many I couldn't get to today.

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